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Friday, July 22, 2016

The Lancelot-Grail Cycle (Notes:13)

Image from the original Prose-Lancelot.

The Prose Lancelot, otherwise known as the
Fullgate Cycle, is one of the major pieces of Arthurian literature; due to its
lengthy nature, however, and the fact that it was written by numerous authors
across many years, lacks the level of coherence seen from even other incomplete
Arthurian narratives. Because it was written by various authors who were
promoting different political and religious emphasizes, the text contradicts
itself. Not only that but the various branches of the text, its different
parts, were written out of sync with how the text was compiled—meaning, for
instance, that the first branch in the text was actually the very last one
written but it was inserted ahead of the other branches and knowingly altered
so as to reference what previous authors had written.

The text itself is striking in how it
combines religious fervor and military activity, specifically, its conversion
of non-Christians. This is not surprising, of course, since certain parts of
the text were compiled at the height of the religious fervor associated with
the crusades.

As an Arthurian text, what the Prose
Lancelot does is demonstrate the first instance of the so-called ‘sword in the
stone.’ However, against common sense interpretations, this sword in the stone
is not Excalibur. King Arthur had two swords; the sword in the stone was one,
but the other, Excalibur, was given to him by the Lady of the Lake; it was
Merlin who took King Arthur out on the lake where he received the sword from a
supernatural entity residing in the lake.

A little known fact is that upon receiving Excalibur,
Arthur also receives a magical scabbard. This scabbard prevents battle wounds
from bleeding, hence making it both a powerful tool and a mildly ironic device
since had Arthur still retained possession of this scabbard come his final
showdown, he would have survived the wound.

In the Prose Lancelot we also start to see
Arthur’s familial relationships become fleshed out. Additionally, Arthur, as
king, is seen to be identified with questing for the sake of questing as a main
function of the Roundtable, thus making it a departure from previous Arthurian
texts which focus on questing as a means of wooing royal ladies.

Questioningly, however, Merlin all but
vanishes from the text after he falls in love with a woman named Vivian, who
imprisons him via magic that he himself taught her. More than mildly kinky
heterosexual relationships, however, the text also explores the idea of
knightly fellowships: in the Prose Lancelot, knightly brotherhood is elevated
onto the same level as lady wooing and sometimes even risen further. Thus
marking that homosociality was a vital function of Arthurian romance.

As an aside, however, some researchers have
speculated that the inclusion of so many French writers in the Arthurian
tradition may have been an attempt to claim ownership over an English cultural
product during a time the two people were engaged in bitter land struggles on
the continent.

~

(For anyone interested further in the Prose Lancelot, there is a ongoing research project which seeks to form a corpus of Prose-Lancelot texts and may be worth checking out for anyone who found this post thought-provoking. The link: http://www.lancelot-project.pitt.edu/lancelot-project.html )